


Threads over the Pale

by CopOfTheApocalypse



Category: Disco Elysium (Video Game)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:14:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24739864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopOfTheApocalypse/pseuds/CopOfTheApocalypse
Summary: For a detective suffering and rebuilding himself, there existed only one liaison to the outside world.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Threads over the Pale

"Does it feel good being so *virtuous,* Harry?"

Lying in thick reeds, all the detective could see around him was the whitest fog, thick enough so as to present itself as a physical barrier. Perhaps adrift in reality, or on the remaining *micro-isola,* Harry accepted the thought without much resistance. His mind spoke to him once again as it had so many times before, perceiving reality through a fractal lens. Slowly climbing to his feet, he dusted off his rear and sides.

"I don't know what you're talking about." He replied, swiping away the invisible specter with a wave of his hand.

"But you do. You're the super cop, right? The clean and sober oracle of the apocalypse."

Furrowing his brow, Harry looked around him. There was no other person- nothing to focus on, only the brown reeds gently swaying with his movements. "It's only us, I'm afraid. A calling of the council, Harry." The Limbic System croaked. "There's no getting out of this one." He stepped forward in spite of his mind, but the fog simply rejected him- as though somebody within shoved him back down with the force of a charging carriage. Above him, he could see only the same fog, reflecting and casting an unknown light down on the detective. An invisible series of projectors cast memories recent and lifetimes ago, with only the southern side being scrambled nonsense grasping into the arcane. On the northern wall were his half-siblings, faces and close-ups of details like Vicquemare's brow twitches or the expressive flesh cradling Trant's eyes.

"Aces high!" a clap. "Aces low!" another. His closest brother in new life held the majority of the mist, from his interesting witticisms to the way he inspired meticulousness, and especially his unyielding faith and support under fire.

"You saved his life, man of the apocalypse. Did you ever consider that it was his time, or are you selfishly clinging to your animal desire for companionship?"

"There's only one time!" Harry roared. "Only one time for sure, and it is decades away. There's time to fix things, there's time to come together." Racked with exhaustion after the slightest outburst, he eased himself back onto the ground and hugged his knees. "It wasn't Kim's. That's obvious because he isn't dead."

A more dulcet, attentive voice interjected- some mixture of voices he could personally affect in the neutral category. It spoke without accent. "Sure, that's what happened. You know as well as I do that time froze in that moment- you made a decision." 

"He looks down on you." Yet another voice spoke, it sent a tremor down his spine in its spectral, haunting din. "He finds you to be insane, juvenile, and almost beyond reproach. Savior or no, look what you *did.*" A blood-spattered gremlin appeared on the ground, flat on his back with a bloodied nose- and a doomsayer with impeccable facial hair wearing a blinding universal truth on his sandwich board. His audience was captive and present, even if visually absent- the heroic, species-discovering Lieutenant Double-Yefreitor, the man of authority telling everybody about the approaching cataclysm and his missing firearm conversationally. 

"They don't see it coming." Chimed the Limbic System once again in her wily tone. Shifting to a sing-songy tone, she added "they're all going to die~."

"You are no chevaliér, yet here you are, suddenly some changed being, suddenly the moral beacon of the gloaming gathering an audience. We've already discussed how you'll fail at communism. we've discussed too the inefficiencies of the *neoliberal* persuasion, and you know you aren't a nationalist. What is it you're trying to do for the apes, Harry? What is it that you're attempting to bring to this world when it's right on the precipice of destruction?" Growled a dissatisfied Lizard Brain, the eldest being in the panoply. "Why'd you stop the abyss? Why'd you stop the death boogie?"

Red-faced and bleary-eyed, Harry cried out in exasperation. "I told you I could bring it back. I'm finding something in this militia, and my siblings within."

"Whatever you say, big boy."

"YOU KNOW YOU WON'T SLEEP."

"The ex-something, Harry, the people you've hurt."

Eyes fluttering open, the detective refamiliarized himself with the immediate surroundings. The comfortable shack in which he had a residence, a table adorned with a typewriter, the hardly-reflective silver-adjacent mirror, and the comfortable fireplace, still burning with the embers of the night before. Outside the walls, the village slept- farther beyond, only a few bright lights in the universal neural network- while most simply turned themselves inwards in their slumber. The electrical wires and radiowaves still thrummed, though at much quieter frequencies.

Pulling on his patrol cloak and drawing the string on his FALN sweatpants, Harry opened the door and stepped outside. His snakeskins awaited him as they always did, by the washbasin under Isobel's sonar cone. Slipping them on, he breathed a heavy sigh of relaxation, letting the cold air soothe his nicotine-battered lungs. The village always smelled of brine that ensconced each of the low buildings, compelling them to share in the odor of the sea. It refreshed the detective, the odor emanating from the alien, unconquered swath of reality. "Let it invigorate you." He spoke aloud to the open air, which did not return with an answer. A euphoric swell awakened his guts- and the feeling in the skin encasing them. Each factor in his deterioration was always immediately apparent- from the aches down his extremities to the pain of a swollen spine.

He journeyed towards the boardwalk, the same buildings greeting him- but his eyes were settling on a plastic dome, and the device beneath it. Bearing a fresh spiral mural of multicolored paint, the connective conduit awaited him. Fishing two silver coins from his pocket, Harry approached the box and picked up the receiver- sliding the coinage into the slot but not dialing a number. Silence greeted him, the static of a network that reached across oceans. A click and a pop- and a tired, familiar male voice greeted him. "Operator. Who can I rout you to?" The voice was young, belonging to somebody tired and deadened.

"Is that you, Petr?"

"Oh- good ahh..." He could hear the man stretch. "Morning. Quarter to three. Don't you work in the morning?"

"Hm... Yeah, yeah- but it is what it is. I have a reservoir of energy that would make a landship blush." A second passed- the second that it took the message to reach his friend on the other line- a liaison to somewhere else. "Besides, I'm super-fixated on my case. Human trafficking- what sick fucks, right?"

"You've got that right. How big is it?"

"How big is what?"

"The human trafficking ring. Interisolary or..?" The man's voice lifted somewhat, curiosity within him stoked.

"It's not really a ring, more like a triangle. Still, it gets some local politician's attention, then the captain's, next thing you know they're sending me out there. But hey- uh... How's university? Did you wind up getting the *full ride?*"

A forlorn silence stretched across the aether for a few pregnant seconds, then the young man replied- tone a lot softer, deadened. "No. I have the 'wrong sympathies.' Looks like I get to keep being an operator. I'll just be the key that unlocks radiocomputers and connects people forever. Pretty depressing, right?"

Harry rubbed his chin contemplatively, shifting the receiver to the other hand and leaning a shoulder up against the decorated booth. He could *feel* Petr's deflation, even from such a long way away- he saw the young man, moribund in his own *ganj* smoke, forever unlocking terminals and, like a person moving pins on a map, moving the threads of man's creation throughout the pale, a weaver of the impossible made into such a mundane thing. "At least it pays pretty well, right?"

"I work doubles, Detective. Four a week. Want to know what that gets you over here in Graad?" A crackle of the radio- anticipating the response coming directly thereafter. "Jack shit. I have an apartment, just enough to pay my utilities *and* get something in my gut at the end of the day. I practically live in this booth- but yeah, it *pays pretty well.*"

"I had no idea... I'm sorry."

"No- I'm sorry, I don't ever get to talk about this... Not until some cop from REVACHOL of all places decided to make a new nighttime friend."

Harry grinned, but a feeling of dread emerged deep within his gut, non-specific in its anxiety. "Really? My station has a doctor, what about you? Do you have *anybody?*"

"Aside from you, Detective? The resources available are pretty piddly."

"Message received- let's try this... If you could be anything you want when you wake up in the morning, what would you be?"

Then, a pre-recorded voice of a haggard female announced: "Your call was not completed within the requisite amount of time. If you wish to receive your .50 réal, please submit a public utility clarification form to the Revachol Department of Radiocommunications clarifying the time you attempted to make the call. Goodbye." Harry closed his eyes and set the receiver back into its cradle. A purple smoke bled from a building beyond his sight out of the barely-ajar window, broken into place. The young man waited in front of the switchboard, listening intently for his friend's voice to return. When it didn't- with a deep exhalation, he disconnected the red wire from the (R20Z) slot and hooked it back to (CENCOM). It wouldn't be long until he had another call- the unabated loneliness of being a public utility returning in tandem with the voices of humans.

Taking a final drag of his cone, and exhaling, the operator leaned back in his seat and stared up towards the high ceiling- bespeckled with cobwebs and mold spots. The console in front of him, the most valued possession in the building, was pristine. Each wire was not merely a strand of metal but a double-insulated, colored conduit. The young man could only stare upwards, though- towards the infinite expanse above him, the unknown- not tainted by humanity's touch. He was trapped- a prisoner in a cage woven from radiowaves.

"Dead." The man replied to the empty air. "I'd wake up dead."


End file.
